A private villa steam room at The Springs, Dubai
Sauna Dekor is a sauna, hammam and spa manufacturer and turnkey contractor, founded in Istanbul in 1987 and now in its 40th year, with work delivered in more than 35 countries by a team of 19 people. This project is a private villa at The Springs, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where we designed and built a single steam room, completed in 2024. For other villas and hotels in the UAE, see our page as a steam room contractor in Dubai.
Project facts: Delivered 2024 · The Springs, Dubai, UAE · Scope: steam room · Equipment: Condair steam generator · Last updated: 6 October 2026
What was built
One wet-heat room, completed in 2024 and clad in bronze-champagne glass mosaic across 3 surfaces: walls, bench and ceiling. The bench is contoured and heated, lit from underneath by a concealed LED strip so the seat appears to float. A hand shower is fitted inside the enclosure for rinsing down. It is a compact, single-room installation that fits into a villa’s existing wet zone rather than a dedicated wellness floor.
The technical decisions behind it
Generator sizing against mosaic
Glass mosaic on a rendered core is a heavy thermal mass, which is why a small room can need a generator that looks oversized on a volume calculation. For this 2024 room the Condair generator was sized for the enclosed volume first, then upsized for the surface build-up, because the first minutes of output go into warming the mosaic and render before the air begins to saturate.
A generator picked from a volume table alone gives a room that takes far too long to become usable and never holds a steady cloud.
Steam inlet placement
The steam head is set low, away from the bench, behind a guard. The plume leaves the head much hotter than the room it is filling, so its position determines where the enclosure is uncomfortable. In a compact room there is little margin, which is why the inlet position is fixed at design stage and not adjusted once the mosaic is laid.
The ceiling has to fall
The mosaic ceiling is laid to a fall so condensate runs to the perimeter and down the wall. It is 1 of 2 surfaces in this room built with a fall; the other is the bench seat. A flat ceiling in a saturated room drips onto whoever is sitting below it, and there is no ventilation strategy that corrects a flat ceiling after the fact.
Tanking, then mosaic
The build-up is an insulated core board, a bonded waterproofing membrane across floor, walls, bench and ceiling with banded internal corners, then adhesive and a grout rated for continuous wet heat. Grout is a wearing surface, not a barrier. Every penetration — hand shower, steam inlet, control, LED channel, drain — has a sealed collar formed as part of the membrane rather than drilled through it afterwards.
The lit bench is a drainage detail
Lighting a bench from below looks like a decorative decision, but it forces 2 engineering details. The bench has to be a formed, tanked element with a fall on its seating face, and it needs a clear shadow gap to the floor, so condensate leaves the seat instead of collecting under it. The LED channel sits in the dry side of that gap, with its driver outside the enclosure.
Extract and drying
Extract runs on a timer after every session. A villa steam room that is switched off wet is where grout failure and staining start; the run-on cycle is not a comfort feature, it is the maintenance strategy.
Door and enclosure
The door does 2 jobs. It is a vapour-tight glazed door, so the steam stays inside the enclosure, and it has a drip channel at the head, so water that condenses on the inside face is returned to the enclosure rather than running out onto the bathroom floor beyond.
What the site required
A villa in an established Dubai community means working inside a house that is finished, occupied and served by MEP designed for an ordinary bathroom. 3 constraints shaped this room: the ceiling void left after the fall was formed, the drainage invert inside the enclosure, and the electrical capacity on the existing distribution board. All 3 are surveyed before the room is drawn, because each can change the generator selection or the enclosure size.
Related capability
See our steam room page for the room type built here, hammam for the marble equivalent, sauna for the dry-heat counterpart and shower systems for the rinse-down stage. A later room in the same full-mosaic idiom is the Bodrum Polimeks Erraertfarm steam room in Türkiye (2026), with a barrel-vault ceiling and an LED-lit curved bench.
Our Dubai page sets out how we deliver in the UAE.
Frequently asked questions
How is a steam generator sized for a private villa?
Against the room’s volume first, then upsized for the surface build-up. A mosaic room on a rendered core carries far more thermal mass than a painted one of the same size, and that mass has to be warmed before the air will hold a stable cloud.
Why is a steam room bench contoured?
Two reasons. Comfort, because a bather sits for longer in a saturated room than in a dry one, and drainage — a contoured bench with a fall sheds condensate to the floor rather than pooling it where somebody is sitting.
Can a steam room go into an existing villa bathroom?
Often yes, but it is not a matter of adding a generator and a door. The enclosure needs its own insulated, fully tanked build-up, a ceiling laid to a fall, a vapour-tight door, drainage inside the enclosure and dedicated extract. A steam room built inside an ordinary tiled bathroom will drive moisture into the surrounding construction.
What grout is used in a mosaic steam room?
A grout rated for continuous wet heat — in practice an epoxy or a high-performance cementitious system — over a bonded waterproofing membrane. The grout is a wearing surface, not the waterproofing; anything relying on grout to keep water out will fail.
Who built the steam room at The Springs?
Sauna Dekor, a sauna, hammam and spa manufacturer and turnkey contractor founded in Istanbul in 1987, with a team of 19 people. We designed and built this single steam room in a private villa at The Springs, Dubai, and completed it in 2024.
Does Sauna Dekor manufacture the steam generator?
No. The steam generator in this room is made by Condair; we size and install it, and its CE and other approvals belong to Condair. Our own certification is TS EN ISO 9001:2015 quality management, covering sauna and spa product manufacturing and after-sales service.
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